One Full Month Before The Wildfire Season Officially Begins, Drivers Are Urged To `Use Your Ashtrays' As The Smallest Spark Can Ignite Disaster.

COCONINO NATIONAL FOREST, Ariz. — Arriving early and with unusual intensity, wildfires have returned to the American West, where their annual fury is underscored by their official designation as a season.

A drought throughout the Southwest is responsible, rendering the region a tinderbox and making skittish residents fear that they live only one smoldering cigarette butt away from an apocalypse.

So far this year, a full month before the season officially begins in some regions, fires have consumed nearly 1.5 million acres, about a third above average, according to National Forest Service officials.

"The fires are outrunning the firefighters," said Dan Battreall, assistant fire management officer in Sequoia National Forest, who was called to help out in the Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Worry that this is the beginning of a long, possibly unprecedented season is palpable in the parched American West. Lighting a cigarette outdoors is illegal in some parts of Arizona, for instance. So is building a campfire in a campground or using any internal-combustion engine device, such as a chain saw, on Forest Service lands, lest a spark ignite the brush.

Along stretches of roadway, electronic signs flash "Use your ashtray," and an occasional motorist who ignores the warning has been stopped by irate witnesses to the act.

Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, southern Colorado and Southern California are all suffering a severe drought, national forest officials said. In Flagstaff, Ariz., near the Coconino National Forest where about 7,700 acres of ponderosa pine burned this week, precipitation for the year stands at 2.16 inches, less than a quarter of normal levels.

The bizarre nature of what is believed to be the Coconino fire's source suggests just how dry the region is. Investigators believe that the fire was started by embers still smoldering from the burning of a "slash pile," branches that logging contractors leave behind after they harvest trees. The slash pile burn at Horseshoe Hill was conducted Feb. 1, with 6 inches to a foot of snow on the ground and under procedures set by the Forest Service, officials said.

Nevertheless, dirt from bulldozers used to push the limbs into the slash piles apparently acted as insulation for embers that continued to smolder for more than three months until Saturday, when high winds blew the dirt away, exposed the embers and released sparks into the dry surroundings.

"It's difficult to believe because it's incredibly unusual," conceded Raquel Romero, spokeswoman for the Coconino National Forest. "The investigators have never heard of anything like it."

Ironically, the burn that may have led to the largest fire in the forest in more than two decades was itself set as a fire prevention measure.

"If we leave all those branches, then if a wildfire started, it could lead to real catastrophic fire," she said. "Those branches are wildfire fuel."

Trying to save the lives and houses of people who live in remote, forested areas can be costly and complicate the logistics of firefighting. Crews may have to be diverted to save houses instead of being deployed where they can most effectively fight fires.

"Fighting a fire is like military warfare; a lot of strategy goes into the deployment of troops and resources," said Philip Robertson, a professor of plant biology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Often those who live in Western forests "pay no attention to the fact that they're building in a fire-dependent forest," said Robertson, who grew up in New Mexico, formerly worked as a smoke jumper and researches Western forests.

"A lot of people like the aesthetics of wood siding and shake shingles. But a shake shingle roof is like putting kindling on your house," he explained. "You'd be better off putting on a tin or steel roof."

People also prefer not to thin the trees around their house. That, too, can feed a fire.

"In terms of fire protection, you're better off having some green lawn that you keep watered or open space--and don't stack firewood right next to the house," Robertson said.

Firefighting difficulties are further compounded by decades of national policy to suppress forest fires. As a result, fuel for forest fires--pine cones, needles, leaves--has accumulated. This buildup can make accidental fires burn hotter and rage more wildly out of control.

Once a big fire gets going, it can create its own weather patterns and winds that promote the spread of flames and further complicate efforts to extinguish it.

Prescribed burning-- intentionally setting controlled fires--has worked in some areas, but its effects have been limited by time, money and the spread of human population.

"You can't turn 100 years of fire protection around by one burn," Robertson said. "You've got to go at it kind of slowly."

The intense fires this year have happened fairly early in the fire season. Robertson predicted that even more scorching fires will come in June and July.